Michael Klein

Jolly Weldon has indeed packed up the keyboards from Jolly’s Dueling Piano Barfrom 2006 Chestnut St. and on Friday, March 25 will open in a larger space in the Academy House (1420 Locust St.). See background here. It will be open for lunch and dinner and Sunday brunch; the dueling-piano shows start at 8 p.m. Wednesdays through Saturdays.

Gordon Dinerman, opening a brick-oven pizza and craft-beer joint in late May called Birra on the East Passyunk strip at 12th and Morris Streets, has a few novel twists in store: Everything on the menu will be available as a pizza topping, such as the meatballs from the meatball gratin appetizer, which can be paired with wild mushrooms and cured olive paste, or roasted peppers and artichokes twinned with several selections of locally cured salumi, or a seafood pie combining baked clams casino, shrimp scampi, and mussels fra diavolo. Dinerman's signature will be Birra Bowls, an open-face calzone baked in a bowl and flipped upside down.

Hate to start a sentence with a numeral, so note that 1601, the gastropub at 10th and Tasker Streets in South Philly, seems to want to reopen. It's been shut down for several weeks, and its Facebook page cited an "administrative glitch" with the Liquor Control Board. So what on earth could precipitate an administrative glitch resulting in the closure of an otherwise operating bar? Management of 1601 didn't reply to my emails, but the LCB explains that the license expired Oct. 31, 2010, and that the licensee reached out to the authorities for renewal on March 14, 2011. Since 1601 had been out of compliance for more than 90 days, the state investigates to determine whether it is still current with health requirements and meets board requirements.So stay tuned.

Cat Cora -- the only female Iron Chef -- has a demo scheduled on QVC from 7 to 9 a.m. on Sunday, March 27.

Pants on the wall? That's chef Ken Lu's decoration touch at the quirky new 5 N 2 Tokyo, an Asian/sushi bar BYOB in the onetime Django space at 526 S. Fourth St. in Queen Village. The name praises Jesus for the miracle of the five loaves and two fish.

About this blog

Michael Klein, the editor/producer of philly.com/Food, writes about the local restaurant scene in his Inquirer column "Table Talk." Have a question? Email it! See his Inquirer work here.